Math-Sci-Tech Trivia Part III

#no more than 2 questions may be answered by each person, one of which must be Q1 (which is open to all and may be attempted in addition to the other question).

Q1. This is a toughie. In the words of Carl Jacobi,"Only _____, not I, not Cauchy, nor Gauss, knows what a perfectly rigorous proof is, but we learn itonly from him. When Gauss says he has proved something, I think it is very likely; when Cauchy says it, it is a fifty-fifty bet; when _____ says it, it is certain."

Who was he talking about ?

Q2. Greek Myth : He was the son of the Greek Goddess of Beauty, Aphrodite and the Herald of the Olympian Gods, Hermes. When he spurned the advances of the nymph Salmacis (Salmakys), she prayed to the Gods, and earned a boon that she be forever joined with him.

What is his name ?

Q3. In the famous book 'Culture of Cities' Lewis Mumford describes the stages in the development and decline of a city - starting off as an eopolis (village) and dying as a necropolis (dead/ghost town).

When is the name of the stage when the city is at its peak ?

Q4. The famous 9th Century Persian mathematician, Mukhammad ibn Musa al Khorezmi (Khuarezmi) is immortalized through two commonly used words, one of which comes from his book 'Kitab al Muhtasar fi Hisab al Gabr w'al Muqubalah'.

What are these words ?

Q5. He was inspector of gunpowder for the French Government during the Revolution, and was guillotined on charges of adulterating tobacco. A few days later, Lagrange said about him, "It took only an instant to cut off that head, and a hundred years may not produce another like it."

Whose head ?

Q6. He signed his letters, 'The Wrath of God'. His name is attached to a fictional effect which causes experiments running in his vicinity to inexplicably fail.

Who is this madman?

Q7. From his autobiography : "One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth."

Who is this weirdo ?

Q8. Woody Allen once commented that it "immediately doubles your chances for a date on a Saturday night."

I'm racking my brain, and I could swear Q1 was applied to Ed Witten. That can't be right, though, because he and Cauchy and Gauss are not contemporaries. :-/ Argh I know some of the other answers outright. Damn this #1 rule!

Q1. No one's got this yet...though there have been a couple good guesses. But no it's not Abel or Heaviside, Riemman, euler or Dedekind.

Abel died aged 27, and really didn't have the time to build relationships. Moreover, he worked on solving quintic equations and the type. Gauss, a number theorist, had shown disdain for such work and had written in his thesis "that the algebraic solution of an equation was no better than devising a symbol for the root of the equation and then saying that the equation had a root equal to the symbol."

Heaviside, being English, was isolated from the European mathematicians. Only after Hardy-Littlewood, were Englishmen considered capable of doing math.

Dedekind and Riemman were a little late on the scene, being in their 20s when Gauss and Cauchy died. By this time, Gauss was something of a recluse, and even though Riemann was his student in Gottingen, there was little interaction.

Euler was too early. He was dead before Gauss and Cauchy became teenagers.

Looks like the only guessable person left is the one I'm looking for.

Q2 is still standing ...as is part of Q4 (Chroot got Algebra but 'geometry' is not right )

#no more than 2 questions may be answered by each person, one of which must be Q1 (which is open to all and may be attempted in addition to the other question).

Q1. This is a toughie. In the words of Carl Jacobi,"Only _____, not I, not Cauchy, nor Gauss, knows what a perfectly rigorous proof is, but we learn itonly from him. When Gauss says he has proved something, I think it is very likely; when Cauchy says it, it is a fifty-fifty bet; when _____ says it, it is certain."

Who was he talking about ?

Hard one. The mathematician obviousy has to be before Jacobi died, and seems to be a contemporary more or less of Gauss and Cauchy too. After considering and rejecting Liouville, I am going to say Dirichlet. He fits the sentiment, even in his early papers, which are in the time frame.

Q2. Greek Myth : He was the son of the Greek Goddess of Beauty, Aphrodite and the Herald of the Olympian Gods, Hermes. When he spurned the advances of the nymph Salmacis (Salmakys), she prayed to the Gods, and earned a boon that she be forever joined with him.

What is his name ? {quote]

Hermaphroditos

Q4. The famous 9th Century Persian mathematician, Mukhammad ibn Musa al Khorezmi (Khuarezmi) is immortalized through two commonly used words, one of which comes from his book 'Kitab al Muhtasar fi Hisab al Gabr w'al Muqubalah'.

What are these words ?

Algebra and algorithm. (the latter from a Latin misspelling of his name).